Describing itself as “an American company offering construction equipment buyers a revolutionary and safe way” to buy Chinese equipment, IronDirect is launching its online commerce site today, offering products that it says can save owners up to 50 percent of the cost of premium machines over the first life of the machine.
Sound familiar?
IronDirect has its roots in International Construction Products (ICP), a start up announced with great flare during the 2014 ConExpo show as a way to market value-priced, Chinese-made machines to North American customers. ICP, under the leadership of industry veteran Tim Frank, shortly afterwards hit a fatal snag when IronPlanet pulled out of its plans to provide the online platform for ICP. ICP then sued Caterpillar, Volvo and Komatsu, minority owners of IronPlanet, for antitrust, a suit that a federal judge threw out of court this January.
All of that is a necessary backdrop to explain the current company’s market proposition. This time, the start-up has capital muscle, provided by new owner Liquidity Services, a surplus assets management firm based in Washington, D.C, with current revenues of $85 million in the company’s third quarter of 2016. With LS backing, IronDirect has a revamped demonstration area, a 450,000-square-foot parts warehouse, and the essential breathing room to try to prove that its concept—in many ways the same as ICP’s—works.
In July, IronDirect invited construction editors to Asheville, North Carolina, to both kick the iron and delve into what the company proposes to deliver to the construction equipment market.
The surroundings were familiar to many of us; this was the former Volvo Construction Equipment proving ground, left vacant in 2011 when Volvo CE moved their North American headquarters from Asheville to Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.
